.. _faq:
PySDL2 FAQ
==========
This is a list of Frequently Asked Questions about PySDL2. If you think,
something is missing, please suggest it!
On importing...
---------------
... my script fails and complains that a SDL2 library could not be found!
Do you use a 64-bit operating system? Please make sure, that the Python
interpreter *and* that the SDL2 libraries are either 64-bit ones *or*
32-bit ones. A 32-bit Python interpreter can't deal with a 64-bit library
and vice versa.
Do you have the libraries properly installed? Did you follow the operating
system's way of installing or registering libraries? If you placed the
libraries in some folder, make sure that the ``PYSDL2_DLL_PATH``
environment variable points to the correct location.
Using...
--------
... the sdl2 API is weird. Why do you use the SDL\_ prefix all the time?
The low-level APIs for SDL2, SDL2\_mixer, SDL2\_ttf, ... shall represent a
clean wrapping around the original C API calls. Thus, if you have to search
for documentation or want to make a Python to C conversion (or C to Python),
most of the code cleanly maps to the original API naming and layout and you
do not have to think about whether you had to use SDL\_ or TTF\_ or whatever
as prefix or suffix.
... the sdl2 API is does not comply to PEP-8. Please make it PEP-8 compatible.
Most of the API is PEP-8 compatible. The low-level bindings to SDL2 and
related libraries however use the exact naming (including capital letters)
as the functions or structures, they map to. See the previous entry for
the reason of that.
How do I...
-----------
... save my surfaces as image files?
You can use :func:`sdl2.SDL_SaveBMP()` to save them as bitmap files. Other
formats are currently unsupported, but might be added to
the :mod:`sdl2.ext` package in the future.
Font handling...
----------------
... is too hard. Why can't it work the same way as pygame does?
The :mod:`sdl2.sdlttf` API does not know about platform-specific font
locations and is unable to resolve font paths based on e.g. the font name
or typeface. It's not its job and PySDL2 likewise does not provide such
functionality. If you need improved font detection support, you might want
to take a look at the sysfont module of the python-utils project, which can
be found at https://bitbucket.org/marcusva/python-utils/.